Happy New Year!

i hope you’re surviving the post-Festive Season well.

Cyalayta
Mal :)

Glad to hear we’re not the only nation with a safety obession but you’re right, some people you just can’t save from themselves.

I love the way nicknames stick with our children too, for sometimes really obscure reasons. It’s endearing.

Our second son’s nickname ended-up as “Boo’… for some long strange almost-unexplainable reason! Thankfully he’s grown out of it now.

All that safety stuff we know it as “OH&S” over here - ‘Occupational Health and Safety”. While 97% of it is simply applying common sense personal safety in the workplace, a lot of it becomes draconian over-regulation that’s simply unenforceable. Tis sad… a lot of things we simply took for granted growing up in a more user-friendly Australia are now illegal! Not that it stops most of us tho…

Mind you… some of the more brainless people who simply don’t use their obvious common-sense in workplace accidents are simply weeding themselves out of the gene-pool for future generations! heh heh.

Hope they don’t burn the village hall down, trying out those lights! Gagh!

Cyalayta
Mal :)

Yesterday on the Beeb, Dr David Jeffrey, a palliative care specialist, described those in favour of assisted death as a ’small group of people who have an exaggerated need for control’ - which, as you can imagine, got me going rather.

Sounds almost unbelievably lacking in empathy for a doctor - and just who is it who has a ‘need’ for ‘control’ here?

He also added ‘that patients contemplating suicide should be referred for psychiatric treatment that may prove to be a successful remedy for patients suffering from depression.’

Meet palliative care expert (and Catholic?) Dr X…

‘Terminal illness? Mmn. How do you feel about that? You’d like the assisted option? Mmn. [Writes on chart] ‘De-pressed’. I’m going to refer you to my colleague. Just a few questions, won’t take long…’

Imagine it. Rage, rage…

Funnily enough, I had completely forgotten about the diary until I began - the memory of opening the locker suddenly came back to me - it was one of those moments when you think - aha! - maybe *that’s* one of the reasons I write… you know, to pick up the thread and finish the unfinished sentence.

On your Mum’s experience: I think there used to be a notion of trying to ‘protect’ children from the realities of terminal illness (not just children, either) which may’ve been well intentioned, but which was, with the benefit of hindsight from more (I like to think) enlightened times, oh so misguided.

Anyhow, I’m touched that you were struck by the account. I think watching ‘Winnipeg’ may’ve set off part of the train of thought - what lies under snow etc.

‘leaving you in a strange, coldly alien landscape; frozen - and maybe wondering when/if the snow would thaw…’

Yes, I’m not sure it ever quite has. But that’s okay. Takes all sorts to make this mad world. :)

And I must read ‘Kitchen’ by Banana Yoshimoto - I’m sure I’ve come across a reference to it somewhere else…

When I used snow in my blogpost I hadn’t read your story yet - I’d read ’step closer’ and was waiting til all three parts of what followed were posted so I could read it in full (and then, erm, took ages to get around to commenting…). I guess we both see snow, symbolically, as something transformative, making the world alien and new - but that isn’t always an uplifting thing, newness isn’t always good, the world’s often much better the way it was. In other words, what I’m trying to say is that the snow motif/metaphor running through all three parts worked really well, was really evocative; the chill knowledge of what was really going on gradually, inevitably building, like snow gradually, inevitably settling and drifting, leaving you in a strange, coldly alien landscape; frozen - and maybe wondering when/if the snow would thaw…

I really liked the last lines, too: definite, factual, but somehow open-ended. They reminded me a lot - in terms of simplicity of phrasing relative to emotional impact, and the journey that might follow - of a line from Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (a novella about someone gradually overcoming grief): “Over and over, we begin again.” At the point it occurs in the book, towards the end, it’s a kind of acceptance - of death; of the nature of life; of facing the future and coming back into the world. Obviously your lines are at the other end of the track, but like that one they suggest so much with beautiful simplicity.

On another tangent: my Mum had a similar experience when her Dad died - exactly what was really going on being kept from her until very near the end - so it was interesting as well to, indirectly, get another insight into a part of her life.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to call what you’ve written a ’story’, exactly - in as much as that word can sometimes sound trivial and implies fiction - but couldn’t think of a better word. Whatever it should be called, though, the writing is beautiful, as ever (I remember in that first MA class with Derrek, and onwards, being struck by the way you make plot/theme itself visible in your images/metaphor), as well as beautifully honest; I was really glad you posted it, because it was certainly well worth reading (what I want to say is something like, “I enjoyed it”, but again it looks like I’m missing the right word).